


ashes to ashes, dust to dust: a new beginning

by dancing_lawn



Category: Chronicles of Narnia - All Media Types, Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis
Genre: Post-Last Battle, but like it's all about how they're dead, essentially what the afterlife is like, i guess there's death?, so it's not violent or anything
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-14
Updated: 2018-03-14
Packaged: 2019-03-31 03:37:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13966533
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dancing_lawn/pseuds/dancing_lawn
Summary: DEATH IS WONDER: a look at the pevensies in death"Here, in the after life, Lucy notes how everything, all of time, seems to collide at once..."





	ashes to ashes, dust to dust: a new beginning

Death is sort of funny. Everybody tells you it’s so morbid, so dark, so sad, but really, dying is very much like living—at least, from Lucy’s perspective. Nothing has really changed: she still gets up at dawn and eats pancakes for breakfast before practicing archery in the fields or visiting her parents in their apartment or bugging Ed. In all fairness, death is a little dull and she occasionally envies her sister for having something to look forward to, besides the endless and infinite monotony of vacation. 

People also forget to tell you that death is not a linear progression, either. Here, in the after life, Lucy notes how everything, all of time, seems to collide at once. She can take a walk amongst ancient Romans and stop to browse the internet at a cafe with free wifi, then watch the sunrise in the heart of Africa, amongst creatures as old as the earth itself before they crumble into dust. 

She spends very little time (or maybe a lot of time—she never can tell) at Cair Paravel, preferring to revel in turn of the century Parisian art and feel the brush of thick grass against her ankles at the height of the Mongolian Empire. When she tires of earthly pleasures, she seeks out the lands that once could only be accessed by pools. She visits stars that were ruled by princesses and finds a favorite ice cream shop in a corner of London that had once been hidden from her eyes. She sees empires rise and fall and such beauty she could never have imagined in Narnia. All of existence is spread before her and Lucy cannot believe that she ever thought ruling a nation was the pinnacle of her life when death was the true beginning. In those moments, she does not envy her sister, but instead wishes she could show her the depth of millions of universes neither of them could have ever dreamed of. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but here, right now and forever, the sun is shining and Lucy is smiling and crying and screaming from every single emotion all at once and she has never felt more alive. 

_____________________________________________________________________

Sitting in the corner of a pub, young—perpetually and forever—Edmund Pevensie downs his scotch. Wiping his mouth with his hand, he leaves a tip out of habit and exits into the bustling New York streets. 

Unlike his older brother, he never denied the existence of beauty on Earth, although unlike his older sister, he never denied the reality of Narnia. No, Earth has a raw, dirty, tough glamour to it that Narnia, sweet and gentle and magnificent Narnia, never possessed. While he would forever love its fields, Edmund couldn’t pretend that visiting Real Earth made him feel alive. It reminds him of cruelty and passion and unfettered rage that he appreciated, when constantly surrounded by mystic and magic. The 21st century, specifically, opens something in him that he doesn’t know he has. Only in death does he learn that one could belong to not only two places, but two times as well. 

Walking through the streets, he descends down into the subway. He takes a random one, knowing it doesn’t matter because it always takes him to where he wants to go. There are many people on here: businessmen, families, college students. They all may be dead, but people will always prefer comfort, and even though there may be no more school to go to or taxes to file, people still slip into their routines. 

Edmund leaves on the next stop. Posters hang on the walls, advertising new shows and reunion concerts. Peter and him are going to a Freddie Mercury concert in a week, as they recently discovered countless musicians—legends, really—that they never got the chance to enjoy. Freddie happens to be one of them. 

He climbs up a block from Central Park. Dogs bark and taxis roar and horses whinny and children laugh and somebody plays the bongos and Edmund smiles. He goes to a hot dog cart and orders one with ketchup and relish and a Sprite, before sitting down at a bench and beginning to wait. He checks his watch out of habit and sees that his date is five minutes late, but he has all the time in the world, so who really cares?

Edmund takes a bite of his hot dog and people watches. They’re mostly strangers, but sometimes, he sees Lucy laughing with the lost princess Anastasia (turns out she wasn’t lost after all, but dead) and Shakespeare on a date with his boyfriend and wife and Anne Frank kissing a boy under an oak. 

“Hey, stranger.” Ed turns and grins. They may have just met but his girlfriend is beautiful and really, what’s the point in pretending otherwise?

That’s something he likes about death. People may have all the time in the world, but they’re dead. They have nothing more to lose now. 

She sits beside him and takes his hot dog out of his hand to take a bite. She tells him how she tried barf flavored jelly beans and watched the Lord of the Rings movies with Tolkien himself and skipped stones along the Seine and painted under the direction of Van Gogh which, according to her, was “an experience, let me tell you” and then had fish and chips before coming to meet him. He tells her that he saw the sunrise in Florence and had breakfast with the Beavers and made a snowman with Han Solo which was “an experience, let me tell you” and saw Mount Vesuvius erupt and then had some scotch before coming to meet her. 

“Sounds like fun,” she laughs, before putting her hand in his. “Care for a walk?”

She pulls him along and he tells her his best jokes which aren’t that great but she laughs anyway. They don’t talk much about their living lives, except in passing when mentioning a funny moment. He learns she was studying to become a dentist but gave it up in favor of art even though she sucked ass (although, Van Gogh appreciates her modernist take on nature apparently). They make out a bit and he is convinced that had he known her in real life, he would have messed all of this up because she is simply magnificent and fireworks are exploding on every inch of his skin and he is not sure anything could feel better than this. He tastes the salt from the relish on her lips and she tastes ketchup and had this been real life, it would have been disgusting, but right now, all they’re thinking about is that their relationship is almost as perfect as the wonder of the hot dog. 

They go up to her apartment and drink some champagne and watch some 90s sitcom before falling asleep. They wake up and the day repeats. 

_____________________________________________________________________

Peter and his siblings don’t like to watch Susan. It hurts too much, watch her mourn and start over and live out a life they wish they could have, experience everything anew. They do it anyway, because it hurts more not to. 

At first, he couldn’t come to terms with what had occurred. He was dead. He no longer existed, beyond a pile of bones six feet under ground. Sure, here he was, sword fighting and exploring and talking and breathing, but he was really crushed under tons of dirt and stone. Lucy told him that he was actually right here with her and his physical body was just a construct made for the illusion of Earth as a method for his soul to experience life or some bullshit, but he didn’t believe her. Sometimes, he went down to the training range and fought with his fists, with his sword, with his entire body, watching sweat drip down his muscles and blood trickling out of the scratches and gashes on his hands and blisters popping on his ankles. Sometimes, he pretended like he was actually alive, that this was still the Golden Age and he still had responsibilities to fill out. Of course, then he saw a painting of Susan or Caspian walk by his study or Jill play chess with Eustace (who was terrible at the game) and then he was reminded that this was the illusion, that he was actually three years dead and decaying in London. 

Other times, he questioned the logic of this after life. After all, he went to a Freddie Mercury concert and he died in 1991, for crying out loud! He saw children that had died in 2103 and 2012 and 3154 on a daily basis, but he never saw his sister Susan. Lucy told him that there was no such thing as time here, but if that was the case, where was Su? Aslan told him that because time was not linear, when Susan would show, it would be as if she was never not here. Some days, it seemed that way, when he felt only an hour had passed but in reality fifty years had.

One minute he was happy and the next he was pulsating with anger. It seemed to him that only he mourned his sister, only he waited for her revival, only he cared that she was living out her life the way he wished he could. But then, he heard Edmund crying in his bedroom next door and Lucy screaming at a dwarf that spoke of Susan’s betrayal, and Peter realized that people deal with grief in their own way. Ed sobbed, Lucy bristled, Peter rationalized, and Susan forgot.

He rarely left Narnia, although he never really needed to. Many came to him. Even to people, creatures, entities that he never ruled, he was still respected as the High King, the Magnificent, the Bearer of the Mighty Sword Rhindon. Even in the afterlife, people clung to magic. On the days he did leave the confines of his land, he had sushi with his parents in Tokyo and ran in the Olympics because he could and went dancing in Argentina. Lucy spoke of distant lands, ones with magic deeper and more ancient than Narnia’s, but he didn’t need much really. Peter was perfectly content with what he did have: a sword and now an Olympic gold medal.  
Some days, Peter woke up and wanted to fight battles and sign treaties and study medicine and do homework. But other days, Peter woke up and wanted to watch the sun rise. 

_____________________________________________________________________

Death is not scary. The fear of the unknown is. But, death is everything, all at once. It is ancient India and aboriginal Australia and the 1940’s in London and every flavored jelly beans and queens of stars and college parties and drinking lemonade by the pool on a hot summer afternoon. Death is home and adventure, at the same time. Death is wonder. Death is hate. Death is comfort. Death is love. Death is not an ending, but a beginning.

**Author's Note:**

> one of my favorite things that I've done! a lot of post-LB stuff focuses on susan's story, which I do enjoy and have written on, but I've always wondered what it was like for the others as they waited for her. I tried to take less of a heavily religious tone, more spiritual than anything else. hope you enjoyed and please don't hesitate to leave any feedback!


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